Creating a pleasant ambiance is a popular aspect of home decor. This is often achieved through various combinations of pleasant fragrances with mood lighting. Lighting can also be combined with other functions such as air sanitization, air deodorization, and the controlled release of insect repellent, insect attractant and insecticide. Conventional products such as scented candles, mood lighting devices, fragrance dispensers, and the like, are commonly used to create a pleasant environment in the home. While those conventional products help to create a pleasant living environment and ambiance, they have their drawbacks.
For example, while scented candles create soft light and fragrance, which creates a pleasant mood, candles are a potential fire hazard and often produce unwanted smoke and wax drippings. Traditional light fixtures and lamps do not provide the color effects, fragrance emission or other volatile active emissions that users often desire. While stand-alone aesthetic devices are available for providing lighting effects (such as color changing and the like), these stand-alone devices do not provide volatile active emissions and take up additional space around the home, adding to the clutter that many consumers are trying to avoid. Additionally, light fixtures and stand-alone devices have external switches, power cords, and the like, which make the devices themselves unattractive.
Furthermore, traditional light fixtures, lamps and stand-alone devices require a DC power supply, an AC power supply, or a combination of both. More specifically, a device requiring a DC power supply uses batteries and a device requiring an AC power supply uses a power cord. A device that uses batteries eliminates the need for unsightly power cords and does not take up additional outlets. However, batteries provide limited power and need to be replaced periodically, resulting in additional costs to the consumer. Alternatively, a device that uses a power cord minimizes additional expenses to the consumer. However, the power cord adds clutter to the home and takes up additional outlets.
A device that provides a combination of both DC and AC power supplies, or a dual power supply, gives the consumer the option of selecting between the two sources. In general, such devices include a compartment for batteries and an input jack for an adapter plug. When using the DC power supply, batteries are supplied to the device and the input jack is left unplugged. When using the AC power supply, the batteries are removed and an adapter is connected between the input jack and a wall outlet. While dual power supplies offer the benefits of both power options to the consumer, such devices are generally sold without the adapter. In order to take full advantage of the dual power supply without the added costs, the consumer is forced to locate an unused adapter around the house. However, it is usually more difficult to find an adapter matching the exact size and voltage rating as required by the input jack.
Conventional fragrance dispensers, such as plug-in diffusers, can provide pleasing aromas in a relatively inexpensive, compact package. However, such conventional fragrance dispensers generally take up outlets and are often located out of sight, causing a user to forget to adjust or refill the device. While these fragrance dispensers may also provide light, because the devices are used in existing electrical outlets, they are generally positioned too low to provide effective lighting features, other than to operate as a nightlight.
Conventional nightlights include only white light emission in combination with fragrance emission. While a single scent may be provided in the form of a decorative diffuser, colored nightlights are not generally available and there is no coordination between the light color emitted and the particular fragrance emitted. Moreover, sophisticated multi-colored lights that change color and that are aesthetically pleasing in combination with fragrance emission are not currently available.
Further, numerous needs exist for devices providing the combination of white light and/or colored light with volatile active emissions other than fragrances, such as air sanitization, air deodorization, the controlled release of insect repellent, insect attractant, insecticide, aromatherapy volatiles or other non-fragrant materials (any of which may be combined with fragrant materials if necessary to make the ambient environment more tolerable). More importantly, numerous needs exist for compact modular circuits enabling the combinations of colored light and volatile active emissions. Modular circuits allow for the interchangeability of parts and features while also promoting expandability.
Recent developments in lighting have led to advancement in light emitting diodes (LEDs) and supporting drive circuits. An LED is a semiconductor device that emits visible light when an electrical current passes through it. The light from an LED is basically monochromatic and the color of the light is determined by the particular material used in the semiconductor (although current applied to the LED can be used to vary the perceived color). LEDs have the advantage of low power requirements, high efficiency and long life. The outputs of several different colored LEDs can be mixed so as to produce additional colors, including white light, and different intensities. LEDs can also be used to provide background lighting to achieve desired ambient effects. Until now, LEDs and supporting circuitry have been generally used for such applications as indicator lights, panel backlighting and fiber optic data transmission.
LED lamps having multicolor adjustors with supporting circuitry or the like exist. These devices typically comprise a base in which several LEDs capable of producing different colored light are mounted upon a circuit board. The circuit provides adjustable and external switches for the different color LEDs so that the colors can be mixed in any desired ratio to produce desired lighting effects such as varying colors and intensity.
Devices also exist having circuits for providing ambient light from a free-standing lamp using LEDs. In one such device, ambient light in the form of a simulated candle is provided by a microprocessor and supporting circuitry emitting both color combinations and flicker effects. These devices are directed toward lamps with external switches for achieving soothing ambient effects. There are also other devices with circuits for controlling the light output of several LEDs according to user input and the predetermined program installed. The user input is provided by external switches disposed on a housing. However, there is no device or circuit having aesthetically pleasing and discrete switches that allow user control of volatile active emissions and ambient light with multiple colored LEDs within a single fixture.
Therefore, multiple needs exist for controllers and related circuitry that provide for discrete switches and the combination of one or more of the following functions: white light emission; colored light emission; colored light shows; fragrance emission; air sanitization; air deodorization; insecticide emission; insect repellent emission; aromatherapy material emission; light emission that repels insects; light emission that attracts insects; and any combinations thereof. Furthermore, needs exist for the modular design of the circuitry. Additional needs exist for controllers and related circuitry that provide dual power supplies having an input jack capable of receiving a wide range of adapters, in terms of both plug sizes and voltage ratings.